


Let's Go Girls

by vondrostes



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: (minor) - Freeform, Canon Compliant, Feminine Harry Styles, Fluff, Gen, Genderfluid Harry Styles, M/M, Miscommunication, Pre-Slash, Shopping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 23:58:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16169414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vondrostes/pseuds/vondrostes
Summary: Mitch wasn't expecting to end up as a fourth wheel on Clare, Sarah, and Harry's girls' night out.





	Let's Go Girls

**Author's Note:**

> People wanted more genderfluid Harry and I am here to deliver. Obviously, it's a lot different in tone than the Xarry smut, but hopefully this will sate you all for now. I do have another genderfluid Harry one shot planned, and I would like to write a longer piece at some point as well.
> 
> I'm on Twitter: @vondrostes & @vondrostesupd8s

Mitch wasn’t really sure what the hell he’d gotten himself into.

Usually after rehearsals, they’d all get together and have a drink, or maybe just hang out for a couple hours before they went their separate ways. Harry invited them to spend the night sometimes, but they were all adults in their thirties, or close to it, and Mitch had always felt a little weird about the idea of having a group sleepover with his girlfriend at Harry’s Hollywood mansion.

But Mitch liked the company even if he was quiet. Most people thought he was antisocial, but reality was quite the opposite. He liked being around people, he just didn’t feel the need to talk just for the sake of talking. He and Harry were similar in that way, he supposed, even though Harry was better at turning on the requisite social skills in a group setting.

Mitch sometimes wondered if that was the media training at work. Maybe Harry was never really himself when he was the center of attention.

Harry also had a tendency to go completely quiet in two very different situations: when he was most comfortable, and when he was most uncomfortable. It had taken Mitch a few months to figure out how to distinguish the two.

Right now, Harry was comfortably silent, sitting with his head lolling against Mitch’s shoulder while the older man drove and Clare and Sarah chattered away excitedly in the backseat.

Mitch still wasn’t sure how he’d ended up being their chauffeur for the night. It had started with Mitch suggesting they go out for a round of drinks, like usual, only for Harry to rebuff him with a singularly baffling statement: “It’s girls’ night.”

“I know,” Mitch replied. Sarah had told him as much that morning when they’d been discussing their plans for the rest of the day. “That’s why I’m asking you if you want to go out. Adam’s staying in to call Emi, so it’d be just us.”

“Oh.” Harry frowned as he sat down against the amp they’d been standing next to while the rest of Harry’s crew bustled around them to make sure everything was cleaned up for the night. “Well, I mean. I can’t go because it’s girls’ night,” he said ruefully. “Didn’t Sarah tell you?”

Mitch shook his head slowly. “She just mentioned something about going shopping with Clare.” He didn’t understand why that made Harry’s cheeks go pink all of a sudden, but he chose to ignore it. “So you’re going with them?” He didn’t understand that either. Hadn’t Harry just said it was girls’ night?

“Yeah, but now I feel bad leaving you high and dry if Adam’s not going to be around.” Harry’s frown suddenly lifted. “You could come with us?”

“I don’t mind hanging out on my own,” Mitch told him.

But Harry had latched onto the idea now and clearly wouldn’t take no for an answer. “It’s fine, I’ll just tell Clare, okay?” And just like that, he was gone.

So somehow, Mitch had ended up behind the wheel of Harry’s very expensive car, wondering to himself as they drove to a store whose name he didn’t recognize why Sarah and Clare had invited Harry to tag along with them on their girls’ night out.

The answers began to unravel when they arrived at their destination to find a greeter waiting for them at the door, and the store itself completely empty once they stepped inside. It was a womenswear boutique, full of clothes that probably cost more than an entire month of rent for Mitch’s first LA apartment.

He hoped Sarah wasn’t planning on spending too much. They may have gotten paid more than they’d ever dreamed of working as touring musicians for Harry, but the nouveau-riche atmosphere of the building they’d stepped into sent a bolt of fear into Mitch’s humble Midwestern heart.

Harry must have seen the look on Mitch’s face; he laughed. “It’s my treat,” Harry told him. “Don’t worry, I’m not planning on having Sarah shop you out of house and home.”

There was a tinge of discomfort that Mitch couldn’t quite shake at the thought of Harry spending that much money on his girlfriend—a relic of his upbringing in which charity meant pity, not friendship—but he quickly buried it and focused instead on the fact that he now had an answer for why Harry was third-wheeling for the girls.

“I guess that’s why they brought you along, then?” he replied conversationally, only to have Harry’s face fall in response. “What?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

But now Mitch _was_ worried. What was it he’d said that had bothered Harry so much? He never seemed to care before when people joked about his money, especially not when he was spending it freely on others. Mitch couldn’t understand what had changed.

Harry broke away before Mitch could think of what to say next, looping an arm around Sarah and Clare’s shoulders before leading them deeper into the store, the man who had greeted them at the door walking along with them.

Mitch was left to his own devices, which was the last thing in the world he wanted right at that moment. After a minute or so of looking around the store helplessly, he finally identified a few chairs outside the fitting room and made a beeline for them.

It was a good half hour before Mitch saw Harry again—during which he’d caught up on his Instagram feed, texted his mother, and played three levels of Candy Crush. He slid his phone back into his pocket as soon as he noticed Harry approaching the fitting room with a bag bursting with clothes in one hand.

“Who are those for?” Mitch asked, nodding toward the multicolored fabrics that he could see spilling out from the top.

Harry froze in place. “Um….”

Clare appeared behind him before he could answer. “Ready?” she asked him, a similar-looking bag clutched between her fingers, though hers was noticeably less full.

“Yeah,” Harry replied quietly. He smiled awkwardly at Mitch as he followed Clare into the fitting room and didn’t answer the question.

He didn’t need to, once Mitch heard two doors slamming shut from inside the recessed hallway. Harry was trying on clothes, he realized. For himself.

That didn’t bother Mitch. It didn’t. Clothes were clothes, right? If women could wear men’s clothing, then men could wear women’s clothing. It wasn’t a big deal.

He settled back against the wall again and kept his eyes on Sarah as she scoured the racks with considerably less enthusiasm than Clare and Harry, if the size of her bag was anything to go off. Apparently, she wasn’t all the way on-board with Harry buying an entire new wardrobe for her.

Mitch got up with a sigh and walked over to Sarah, who smiled up at him placatingly as he approached.

“I’m almost finished,” she told him, before picking out a cream-colored sweater that Mitch had the most ridiculous urge to reach out and pet.

“You don’t have to hurry on my account,” he reassured her. “Just thought you might be lonely.”

Sarah scoffed. “I’m fine, thank you. I’m just not as into the whole shopping experience as the other two.”

Mitch rested his chin on her shoulder as she carefully perused the rest of the clothes hanging on the rack, frowning a little. “Can I ask you something?” he said quietly, even though there was no way that either Clare or Harry would have a chance of overhearing.

“Mhmm.”

“Why didn’t you tell me Harry was coming with you and Clare tonight?”

Sarah froze up, the sudden stillness almost imperceptible. But Mitch was plastered against her back, could feel the tension in her muscles like they were his own. “I didn’t know if he wanted me to say anything,” she finally answered, but the words were stiff, unnatural. She wasn’t being completely honest, for whatever reason.

“Why would he have a problem with that?” Mitch questioned, confused.

Sarah shrugged him off unexpectedly. There was a look of panic in her eyes, a classic deer-in-the-headlights expression. Mitch was starting to feel equally uneasy now that he knew for sure something was going on.

Mitch opened his mouth to press Sarah for something more, but didn’t have the chance. He was cut off by the sound of Clare’s voice echoing through the empty store, calling out Sarah’s name.

Sarah sighed and shouldered her bag. “Probably wants my opinion about something,” she said. “You can come with?” She phrased it like a question, leaving Mitch the option of backing out if he wasn’t comfortable accompanying her.

Mitch shrugged. “Sure.”

Mitch trailed along behind Sarah as they made their way back to the fitting rooms on the other side of the store, only to arrive just in time to see Harry stumbling out of one of the stalls wearing an outfit that made Mitch’s jaw drop.

There wasn’t anything particularly spectacular about it, at least to Mitch, who wouldn’t know fashion if it hit him in the face, but on Harry, the jade sweater and white skirt combo was unusually striking, not least of which because it was completely unexpected.

All this time, Mitch had thought Harry had worn Clare’s dress as a joke, not because he actually wanted to, but he was second-guessing that assumption now.

Harry’s eyes met Mitch’s from across the way, wide and green—like his sweater. Mitch was too afraid to drop his gaze first, and he figured Harry must’ve felt the same; their eyes remained locked even as Sarah and Clare fluttered around him, gushing about how good his outfit looked until Harry’s face turned red and he had to shoo them away.

Sarah retreated to grab her own things, but Clare wasn’t quite so willing to let Harry push her around. She grabbed another bundle of fabric from Harry’s bag and shoved it into his hands. “Try this one next,” Clare insisted as she herded him back into the fitting room stall.

Mitch made a break for it as soon as Harry was safely hidden away and could no longer see his panicked retreat. Sarah could, though. She followed him over to the chairs on the other side of the wall, leaning down to speak softly into his ear.

“You okay?” she asked, frowning.

Mitch nodded. “Just don’t want to make him uncomfortable,” he replied uneasily. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with what he’d said, but Sarah flinched a little, like he’d done something wrong. Mitch wanted to ask what it was, but Sarah was already pulling away from him, waving one of her prospective outfits meaningfully.

“Better try this on,” she said, her tone full of faux-chipperness.

“You want me to…?” Mitch asked, gesturing toward the fitting room he’d just escaped.

Sarah shook her head. “I can come out here and show you,” she replied with a forced smile.

Mitch nodded and leaned his head back against the wall with a sigh as she walked away, wondering why it felt like he’d just failed a test he hadn’t even known he was taking.

Sarah’s offer to show off her potential purchases while Mitch stayed safely outside the fitting room was kind, but in the end, completely ineffective. It seemed like every time Sarah set foot outside the entrance, Clare was dragging Harry out too so they could compliment her, usually while Harry was clad in various items of women’s clothing.

Mitch tried his best to ignore that, focusing instead on Sarah and what she was wearing, but finally he broke. It was a wine-colored dress that finally did it, with long poofy sleeves and a giant bow hanging from the lacy collar. Mitch might’ve swallowed his tongue when Harry wandered out wearing it, barefoot against the carpet with his toes pointed in as he critically examined Sarah’s dress. Which should’ve been the dress Mitch was looking at, but he wasn’t. He was looking at Harry’s.

“You should buy that one,” Mitch blurted out, surprising even himself as the words sprang from his lips. All three turned to stare at him quizzically. He nodded at Harry, whose hands had come up to his neck to fiddle with the collar. “It looks good on you,” he said weakly before finally managing to tear his eyes away so he could compliment Sarah instead. Like he was supposed to.

When the trio were finished, they had managed to whittle down their purchases to only a dozen or so items each for both Clare and Harry, while Sarah stuck with her top five, and refused to be talked into buying any more.

Mitch made a show of covering his ears and closing his eyes at the register while the employee who had let them in rung up their purchases at the register. Harry seemed to find the display amusing, if his vaguely fond eye-roll was anything to judge by.

Mitch wondered if that was the end of their so-called girl’s night out as they exited the shop, but Harry answered his unspoken question before he had a chance to actually ask.

“Let’s go to my place,” Harry proclaimed in a too-loud voice as they returned to the car. “We can get properly pissed since we’re off tomorrow.”

Mitch wasn’t sure adding alcohol would help dissipate the tension that had built up over the course of the night, but Harry seemed to be in a marginally better mood when they reached his house. He put on a movie almost as soon as they stepped through the front door, some romcom Mitch had never even heard of, much less seen.

Both Harry and Clare made themselves scarce shortly thereafter—Harry running into the kitchen to get wine and some snacks while Clare vanished upstairs without explanation.

Harry was the first to return to the living room, with not only one but two bottles of red wine, which Mitch gladly broke into as soon as he had a glass in hand.

He was grateful for the slight buzz once Clare bounded back into the living room with an assortment of various makeup items clutched in her arms. Mitch didn’t need to be a psychic to know where things were heading.

He focused intently on the movie despite not managing to figure out either of the leads’ names while the others beautified themselves, using a collection of nail polishes, eye shadows, and lipsticks that Mitch could only assume belonged to Harry himself.

And then Clare and Sarah turned their talents on Harry, who was sitting curled up on the couch to Mitch’s left. Sarah leaned over Mitch’s lap to paint Harry’s nails in a shimmering gold while Clare worked on applying a pearlescent shade of ivory to his eyelids.

Mitch’s eyes kept flicking back and forth between the TV and Harry, unable to commit to just one.

“You know,” Clare finally said after a good five minutes of Mitch’s all-too obvious indecision, “if you’re not going to watch the movie, you might as well help.”

Mitch studiously avoided looking at Harry as he answered Clare. “Um, what exactly do you want me to do?” he said. “It looks like you’ve got it covered.”

She sighed and handed him a tube of lipstick. Mitch looked down at it uncertainly. The shade was ‘Rouge Allure’ which sounded intimidating, but when Mitch opened the lid, the color itself looked more orange than red. “Uh,” he said, looking helplessly at Clare.

She paused in her ministrations to demonstrate on herself. “Swipe a little here,” she said, pointing first to the center of her bottom lip and then the top, “and here, and then smudge the rest with your finger so it isn’t so overwhelming.”

Mitch was more than a little hesitant as he approached Harry with the tube of lipstick in hand. It didn’t help that Harry was staring directly back at him as he carefully pressed the lipstick against Harry’s lips where Clare had indicated, leaving a bright orange smudge in the middle of Harry’s mouth that Mitch suddenly had the inexplicable urge to lick off.

He suppressed the thought as he set the tube aside before carefully wiping at the stain with his thumb, spreading it across Harry’s lips until the color was even and subtle enough that it would have been hard to tell he was wearing any lipstick at all from a distance. Mitch was close enough to tell, though, and he was close enough to make a note of how the color on Harry’s lips complemented the blush quickly blossoming along his cheekbones.

Mitch’s thumb lingered at the center of Harry’s mouth for just a millisecond longer than was necessary; Harry’s tongue darted out to taste it. Mitch wasn’t sure, even as he pulled away reflexively, whether the action had been unconscious or not.

Worse somehow than the intimacy of helping to apply Harry’s makeup was how startlingly pretty he looked after it had been put on, so much so that Mitch couldn’t help himself as he finally pulled away to get a better look.

“You look really—good,” he told Harry, amending his statement at the last second to make it sound less…well, just less.

Harry lit up at the compliment anyway and leapt up off the couch in a drunken tizzy, dancing with Clare around the living room despite the fact that the movie was still playing in the background. Mitch pulled Sarah closer to him, slotting her into his right side and squeezing her tightly until he felt semi-normal again.

It wasn’t too long before Clare and Harry finally tired themselves out. They drifted to opposite sides of the couch, Clare on Sarah’s right while Harry flopped down on the cushion to Mitch’s left. He curled up against the arm like a cat and closed his eyes, only to change positions again a few seconds later, and then again, until finally he ended up with his head on Mitch’s thigh.

Harry fell asleep within seconds after that, and Mitch didn’t have the heart to make him move. Instead, he let his hand drift ever closer to Harry, before finally allowing his fingers to brush against Harry’s close-cropped curls, light enough that even if Harry had been awake, he might not have felt it.

“Can I ask you to be straight with me now?” Mitch said quietly a few minutes later, once he was certain that both Clare and Harry were out cold. Sarah stirred, roused from her half-asleep state by the question.

“What’s up?” she asked.

Mitch turned his head slightly to give her a pointed look.

Sarah sighed and burrowed back into Mitch’s armpit. “I don’t really know how to explain it,” she murmured, her lips dragging against the soft fabric of his button-down. “Sometimes—” She stopped to suck in a deep breath. “Sometimes Harry wants to be one of the lads, I guess,” she said. “And sometimes sh—sometimes he wants to be one of the girls.” She glanced up at Mitch meaningfully, imploring with her eyes for him to understand, but he couldn’t make sense of what she was saying.

“I don’t get it,” he confessed meekly. “Sorry.”

Sarah sighed again. “Let me put it this way: you’re the only guy crashing our girls’ night, Mitch.”

It took a long moment for the wires in Mitch’s head to align. “Oh,” he said, realizing belatedly what she’d been trying to tell him. He still wasn’t quite sure he fully understood what that meant for Harry specifically, but he knew now that it was deeper than whatever rockstar androgyny he’d attributed to Harry in the past. “Okay. I mean, that’s fine. I don’t have a problem with it.”

He wasn’t sure what response Sarah was hoping for exactly, but she simply closed her eyes and exhaled deeply against his chest. “You should probably talk to Harry about it later,” she told him sleepily.

“I will.”

It wasn’t long before her breathing transitioned into a slow rhythm that left Mitch the only one still awake as the movie finally reached the end credits. He hadn’t even been conscious of the last ten minutes, intent on combing his fingers through Harry’s curls instead.

Mitch knew the best thing to do was to wake Sarah and call a cab so they could go home and sleep, that he should give himself some space from Harry to sort through the myriad revelations he’d received in just the past few hours, but Mitch didn’t do any of those things. He fell asleep on the couch with Sarah’s arms wrapped around him and his fingers still tangled in Harry’s hair.


End file.
